Made in USA: Overseas jobs come home

The sad thing is, this is not linked to a full employment policy.  The unemployment rate will still be kept at a level (6 per cent or better) that will ensure low wages, and a permanent state of insecurity for the mass of the American population.  The American population will still be expected to serve in any and all foreign adventures and pay any taxes that are necessary to preserve the corporate oligarchies.

 A dated article, but interesting.

            ------lee

By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney June 17, 2011: 1:09 PM ET
    
     NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's still only a trickle compared to the flood of jobs that America lost to overseas outsourcing in recent decades. But some American businesses are bringing jobs home again.

     In Louisville, a closed General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) appliance plant is being renovated to begin producing water heaters. An existing plant in the same complex will start making refrigerators. Both products are now being built overseas. Hiring of about 1,300 union-represented workers is due to begin this fall.

     A technical support call center for computer back-up firm Carbonite will start taking calls this summer in Lewiston, Maine. By the end of this year, 150 jobs that had been located in India will be shifted to there, with another 100 jobs expected to be added next year.

     NCR (NCR, Fortune 500) has already hired about 500 workers to build ATMs and self-service checkout systems at a Columbus, Ga., plant, and it plans to add another 370 jobs by 2014, building products that were formerly produced at plants in China, Hungary and Brazil.
trend of reshoring or insourcing is likely to grow in the coming years, as the cost gap between building overseas and building at home narrows. It's an encouraging sign in a job market where hiring has stalled in recent months.
     "Based on the number of calls I'm getting, I think a lot of people are taking a long hard look at what's gone on in recent times," said Peter Dorsman, the senior vice president of Global Operations at NCR.

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The Shockingly High Cost Of Free Trade: 10 Reasons Why Globalism Is Bad For Middle Class Americans

I don't believe in free trade, and neither should you.---rng

from endoftheamericandream.com

Today, there are very few national figures that are dissenting from the politically-correct viewpoint that free trade is a good thing.  The vast majority of Republican politicians believe in free trade.  The vast majority of Democrats believe in free trade.  Barack Obama believes in free trade.  Nancy Pelosi believes in free trade.  Rush Limbaugh believes in free trade.  Glenn Beck believes in free trade.  In fact, just about anyone who goes on mainstream media and starts speaking out against free trade is immediately branded an idiot who does not understand the first thing about economics.  So considering the fact that leaders on both sides of the "political spectrum" fully embrace free trade, shouldn't we just go with the consensus and consider the debate about trade to be over?  Well, there is just one problem.  All of this globalism and free trade is killing the American Dream and is destroying the American middle class. 

But isn't being able to purchase products at the store for a much lower price a good thing?  If China can make clothing much cheaper than we can, then why shouldn't our clothes be made in their factories?

Well, it turns out that free trade and low prices come with a shockingly high cost.

The following are 10 reasons why globalism and free trade are really bad for middle class Americans....

1- Millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs have been outsourced and offshored and they are never coming back.  The transition to a global economy has put middle class American workers in direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world.  The gigantic global predator corporations that now dominate the world economy have made their choice and they are moving factories and offices out of the United States at a staggering rate.  30 million Americans are now unemployed or underemployed.  Today there are approximately 6 unemployed Americans for every single job opening.  But why should giant global corporations hire middle class Americans?  In many areas of the third world, the taxes are much lower, regulations are virtually non-existent and highly-motivated workers will gladly work for less than a tenth of what a middle class American worker would make.   

2 - The millions of American workers that have lost their jobs end up being supported by the government.  The truth is that we pay for American workers one way or another.  Either we buy the products and services they create or we support welfare payments to them.  In the United States today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.  The number of Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits is at record levels.  The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a new all-time record of 40.8 million in May.  In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps has set a new all-time record for 18 months in a row.  One way or another, we are going to end up financially supporting American workers.  Would you rather buy their products and services or would you rather have your taxes raised to pay for their welfare benefits?

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The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism

From my favorite economist, but I think he misjudges intent of OWS creators.  Soros is predicting riots and suppression of civil liberties.  That I fear is part of the elite's plan, and dovetails nicely with the effort to institute indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial via the NDAA.  I think Batra's economic solutions are sound, but Obama is a puppet, and it is a mistake to look to him for change.  For the time being, education of the public is incomplete, and must be expanded so that the change, when it comes will be genuine and not managed...rng


from truthout
Tuesday 11 October 2011

by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis

In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.

The first question is this: Why does rising wealth disparity create poverty? My answer is that it causes overproduction and hence unemployment and destitution. It is all a matter of supply and demand. Inequality goes up when official economic policy does not allow wages to catch up with the ever-growing labor productivity, so that profits soar and rising productivity increasingly raises the incomes and bonuses of business executives. I have detailed this process in an earlier article. Then money sits idly in the vaults of bankers and big-business CEOs and restrains consumer demand, leading to overproduction and hence layoffs. The toxic combination of mounting layoffs and absent job creation raises poverty, which, according to official figures, is now the highest in 50 years.

The next question is: how has the government either restrained wages relative to productivity or made the rich richer and the poor poorer? It is easy to see that almost all official economic measures adopted since 1981 and contained in the following list have devastated the middle class. The list includes:

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Nine Percent Is Now Full Employment in America

A truly infuriating article spewing the corporate line.  Nothing we can do about unemployment, so just get used to your life of depression and desperation.  Yes, we can do something about unemployment.  Tariffs made this nation great before and they can do it again, and the economic elite be damned.---rng

Summary

Without excessive government or consumer spending - which can only create temporary jobs - we believe 9% is now close to full employment in America. Although this statement is initially somewhat shocking, we've been expecting it and only recently realised why it took so long to finally show up.

For ten years - from 1998 to 2008 - excess consumer spending, which amounted to about $400 billion a year, created millions of temporary but really nonessential jobs. This somewhat artifical job production masked for ten years the damage being done to America from the loss of 20 million jobs to overseas labor. There are only so many products and services people really need and too many of them were now made overseas. When consumer spending and savings came back to normal levels, the nonessential temporary jobs disappeared exposing the employment damage.

If we are right, it represents a major wakeup call and the consequences to both business and real estate forecasting are profound. So are the political ramifications.

The problem is Globalization. Globalization, while good for multinational companies, is known to be very damaging to employment levels in developed countries like America and Great Britain as millions of productive jobs move to developing countries like India and China.

The Process of Globalization Brings Country "Normalization"

The process of globalization helps bring about “normalization” in the world – a leveling of standards of living from country to country. For this to happen standards of living in developed countries must suffer a little while the developing countries move up rapidly. From a world view that’s good – from an individual country view it may not be.

But it doesn’t start out this way. At first globalization seems a blessing. Many essential items cost less so more money is available to spend on services and the niceties of life – life gets better, one feels “richer.“ But as the outflow of jobs to foreign countries continues this view changes. After a while it becomes hard to replace all the lost jobs with meaningful ones. Unemployment rises.

A Warning from Buffett

Many people estimate that we’ve lost about 20 million jobs to foreign countries over the last twenty years. If we no longer make something we have to import it, and the 700 billion dollar trade deficit simply reflects this. In January of 2006 Warren Buffett said, “The U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to ‘political turmoil.’ Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment.” At the time few cared or even noticed since unemployment remained low.

Global Forces Now Dominate

This view about American employment highlights something we firmly believe – that global conditions and factors now control the American economy more than what is happening internally. It also puts in doubt the tried and true, standard solutions the government uses. Stimulation packages no longer work because there is now little to stimulate. They are using old internal solutions to fix an economy now controlled by external conditions. Until the government faces this and begins to solve the real issue – the long term detrimental effects of globalization on the American economy – nothing significant can occur.

We think this paradigm is very close to the correct view and it carries many important forecasting consequences. Forecasting is always difficult. It must be done as honestly as possible with no bias or consideration for political correctness or whether the forecast will be accepted or believed. Many economists err here, using old, safe economic models, or they simply follow a consensus. In their eyes – and they’re probably right - it's better job security; if the forecast proves wrong they can’t be criticized. But then money is lost as the forecast fails.

A Bull Market With High Unemployment

Investors must stop fixating on American employment, thinking we can’t have a recovery and bull market without it.

First, if 9% is full employment, we are pretty much at full recovery right now. Don’t expect a lot more - but don't expect a second dip either. Second, over half of the S&P 500 earnings now come from overseas operations and because of foreign growth, you could have long term earnings growth and an American bull market even if unemployment stayed right here at 9%.

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Wonkbook: The real unemployment rate is 11 percent

Posted by Ezra Kleinat 07:51 AM ET, 12/12/2011  

Typically, I try to tie the beginning of Wonkbook to the news. But today, the most important sentence isn't a report on something that just happened, but a fresh look at something that's been happening for the  last three years. In particular, it's this sentence by the Financial Times' Ed Luce, who writes, "According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent."

Remember that the unemployment rate is not "how many people don't have jobs?", but "how many people don't have jobs and are actively looking for them?" Let's say you've been looking fruitlessly for five months and realize you've exhausted every job listing in your area. Discouraged, you stop looking, at least for the moment. According to the government, you're no longer unemployed. Congratulations?
Since 2007, the percent of the population that either has a job or is actively looking for one has fallen from 62.7 percent to 58.5 percent. That's millions of workers leaving the workforce, and it's not because  they've become sick or old or infirm. It's because they can't find a job, and so they've stopped trying. That's where Luce's calculation comes from. If 62.7 percent of the country was still counted as in the workforce, unemployment would be 11 percent. In that sense, the real unemployment rate -- the apples-to-apples unemployment rate -- is probably 11 percent. And the real un- and underemployed rate -- the so-called "U6" -- is near 20 percent.

For more ...

The high price of ‘free’ trade

NAFTA’s failure has cost the United States jobs across the nation
By Robert E. Scott | November 17, 2003
from Economic Policy Institute

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.

NAFTA is a free trade and investment agreement that provided investors with a unique set of guarantees designed to stimulate foreign direct investment and the movement of factories within the hemisphere, especially from the United States to Canada and Mexico. Furthermore, no protections were contained in the core of the agreement to maintain labor or environmental standards. As a result, NAFTA tilted the economic playing field in favor of investors, and against workers and the environment, resulting in a hemispheric “race to the bottom” in wages and environmental quality.

False promises

Proponents of new trade agreements that build on NAFTA, such as the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), have frequently claimed that such deals create jobs and raise incomes in the United States. When the Senate recently approved President Bush’s request for fast-track trade negotiating authority1 for an FTAA, Bush called the bill’s passage a “historic moment” that would lead to the creation of more jobs and more sales of U.S. products abroad. Two weeks later at his economic forum in Texas, the president argued, “(i)t is essential that we move aggressively [to negotiate new trade pacts], because trade means jobs. More trade means higher incomes for American workers.”

for complete article

Free Trade Is Literally Killing Japanese Men

January 7, 2012 · 6:26 pm
Culture of Life News

The jobs issue is a huge, huge issue this coming decade.  Already we see the approaching storm as millions and millions of people are pitched into the darkness as international trade destroys the working class of the first world and many second tier nations.  In the previous posting here, I talked about the housing bubble and resultant job dearth when these popped in Spain and Ireland.  Today, I return to the dark matter of comparing US workers to Japanese workers and we can see what is lying in our futures if we imagine we can export our way to middle class prosperity for the lower working class here.

Naturally, after accepting his pay from his Wall Street masters, Obama begs these businesses: Bring jobs home.  Why on earth should they?  They make more profits using foreign labor.  There are now virtually no protections of native jobs so we are all at the mercy of the value of the dollar when it comes to trade and all trade rivals toil very hard to insure the dollar is strong, not weak.

This way, we can never, ever export our way out of this trap.  But instead of reacting to a 40+ year trade deficit by aggressively protecting the US, the opposite has happened.  Therefore, For many Americans, jobs crisis to last many years.

The poor working class here which mainly continues to exist due to the war on drugs which makes illegal drug trafficking very profitable for at-home workers willing to risk death or jail.  Our leaders rigged the games so that the war on drugs will go on forever, knowing perfectly well, this keeps the poor in their place for they can be arrested at any time for the most trivial amounts of illegal hooch.

Meanwhile, let’s go to Japan for news about that terrible, dying economy.  Once, one of the top exporters on earth, Japan has been left in the dust by the rise of the giant Chinese operations.  To compete with China, Japan worsened working conditions of their own factory labor.  Today, Poor employment conditions push Japan’s young to the edge – The Mainichi Daily News

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